To Press a Lot, you Must Press a Lot

“All discipline for the moment seems not to be pleasant, but painful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields a peaceful harvest of right living.”– Hebrews 12:11 — “All discipline for the moment seems not to be pleasant, but painful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields a peaceful harvest of right living.”
– Hebrews 12:11

One of my favorite maxims about exercise has many applications to life. It's a saying I picked up from the Russian kettlebell king, Pavel Tsatsouline:

"To press a lot, you must press a lot."

There are a few ways to interpret this. The strength-training application is that if you want to get strong at overhead press, you need to do a lot of repetitions of overhead press. Pavel argues you should focus more on repetitions to build muscular strength as well as neurological ability. Pavel is also proponent of not burning yourself out by lifting to failure. He argues you should always leave some energy leftover for life after your workout (I highly recommend his books on kettlebells if you want an in-depth primer).

The broader application of this maxim is that doing things often simply requires that they be done. It's a basic truth that is easy to forget. If you want to be strong, all you need to do is the thing that makes you strong. If you want to be smart, all you need to do is the thing that makes you smart.

If you want to X a lot, then you must X a lot. It's simple, and it can't be skipped.

—Erik Pavia, CEO